Two Iranian men, including a dual Iranian-American citizen, have been charged in connection with a fatal drone strike that killed three U.S. military service members and injured dozens more earlier this year.
Mohammad Mahdi Sadeghi, a resident of Natick, Massachusetts, and Mohammad Abedini, who was arrested in Italy and is in the custody of Italian authorities, have been accused of exporting sensitive technology to Iran that was used in the fatal drone attack. Abedini faces additional charges of conspiring to provide material support to Iran.
The charges are linked to the deadly January 28 strike against U.S. forces in Jordan, near the Syrian border. The pair were arrested after the FBI analyzed the drone and traced the navigation system back to an Iranian company operated by Abedini.
The company, which is operated by Abedini, allegedly makes navigation systems for drones and has connections to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The two men allegedly conspired to circumvent American export control laws and procure sensitive technology into Iran.
The three U.S. Army Reserve soldiers who were killed in the attack were Sgt. William Jerome Rivers, Spc. Kennedy Ladon Sanders, and Spc. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett. All three were residents of Georgia and were deployed in Jordan in support of Operation Inherent Resolve.
The U.S. government has blamed the January 28 attack on the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of Iran-backed militias that includes Kataib Hezbollah. In response to the attack, the U.S. launched retaliatory strikes on more than 85 targets in Iraq and Syria against Iran’s IRGC Quds Force and affiliated militia groups.
